1. ARM does not produce any chips itself, but licenses its technology to 191 companies, including Texas Instruments, Samsung, Intel, Apple, Nokia, and Infineon. source
2. List of ARM licensees: http://www.arm.com/products/processors/licensees.php
3. According to 2007, estimates the ARM license costs only 6.7 cents per chip. 2010 estimates expect 4.5 billion products shipped, which dictates an annual revenue of $310.5 million in license fees alone. The license fees could be manipulated to use as leverage against Apple competitors.
4. Licensing information could also give Apple important data about its competitors and their low-power computing strategies. Consider the recent Google acquisition of Agnilux, for example. If Apple knows how many licenses you purchase, they can gain insight into your success and strategy.
5. Amazon’s Kindle runs a Freescale ARM-based processor. HTC uses ARM-based processors. Nokia uses ARM-based processors. Blackberry uses ARM-based processors. See where this is going?
6. Apple is currently embroiled in patent suits with both HTC and Nokia. Gaining control over valuable ARM IP gives them even more leverage.
7. If Apple buys ARM Holdings, it further represents their believe that the future is mobile.

“It takes a remarkably short time to withdraw from the world. I travelled until I arrived at a life of my own. What really makes us is beyond grasping. It is way beyond knowing. We give in to love because it gives us some sense of what is unknowable. Nothing else matters. Not at the end.

I saw her once more only. I saw her by accident at an airport changing planes. She didn’t see me. She was with Peter. She was holding a child. She was no different from anyone else.”

When I first saw this film I thought about it for days. I went and got the book it was based on (Damage by Josephine Hart) and read it in one marathon session. Propped up on my bed, unwilling to detach. Like the film, the dialogue is spare and not frivolous. No word is wasted. This focuses the emotional force of each expression. Ideas and feelings are suggested in the spaces between lines and between moments.

In the film, the characters convey a complex melange of feeling with each look they share. By observing the characters on screen we get some sense of the emotional intensity between them. At turns stricken or overcome. Restrained or unbound. And in our turn it resonates with the force of our own bodily memory. As people who have felt something powerful and intoxicating.

Love is not a trifling thing. It creates and destroys. In the words of Kierkegaard, “Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.” Very few films seem equipped to show us the dual aspects of love. To love means ceding control of your life to something other than yourself.

The last few lines of the final scene are ambiguous. And this ambiguity is what leaves you thinking.

“I saw her once more only. I saw her by accident at an airport changing planes. She didn’t see me. She was with Peter. She was holding a child. She was no different from anyone else.”

She was no different than anyone else. That is a compelling statement. There are multiple interpretations for what he means. While under its spell does the object of love take on significance that is unrelated to reality? Do we somehow transform our own reality through desire so that individuals become intensely meaningful to us in a way that is beyond reason? What separates the man or woman we desire from any other in the world? Perhaps only the focus of our desire. Once desire has withered or become focused elsewhere we see them as what they were the whole time: another person. But, desire transforms a mere person into an object of religious devotion.

Another way to interpret that line is as a realization of the momentary nature of desire. Romantic love breaks out like a wildfire and enraptures each person. But, if the passion between two people is destroyed, no trace remains other than the memory of feeling. What do we find when we discover that things we once felt are no longer true? How do we reconcile the intensity of the dead past with the deadness of the living present?

Why are third party sales so important to online retailers? A few reasons.

Increased revenues at no cost

Every time you purchase something from a third party seller on Amazon.com, Amazon gets a cut. But, unlike with everything else on the site, Amazon didn’t have to purchase the item, store the item, account for the item as inventory, or fulfill the item once it was purchased. All they do is connect buyer and seller and take a cut. It’s your classic win/win/win situation. And what a win it is:

Amazon doesn’t break out the dollar value of third-party sales, but they made up 31 percent of the overall unit sales in the third quarter of 2009, according to a regulatory filing. Amazon said more than 1.8 million seller accounts were active on its site worldwide in Q3, up 24 percent from a year ago.

Think about that for a second. Amazon is making 31 percent of its sales from third party sellers for products they never need to touch. It’s all pure profit.

Of course, Amazon didn’t pioneer this model, eBay did. But, unlike eBay, which has lost its way entirely, Amazon protected the integrity of the retail experience. Bad sellers are punished ruthlessly and sellers are kept in line. Buyers are not a problem because Amazon handles payments directly. As long as sellers can make money they will stay with Amazon no matter what the terms, but once a buyer is disappointed or taken advantage of they may disappear forever. Amazon understands the leverage and priorities implicit in this three-way relationship.

More sellers create a deeper catalog

On its own, Amazon may not be able to anticipate every potential product a consumer may want. But, if you have 1.8 million sellers like Amazon you also have 1.8 million individual sources for ideas. Third party sellers may sell any number of things from small run specialty products to niche clothing brands and anything else that would be difficult for a giant like Amazon and its army of buyers to identify.

Likewise, the more products you offer from more sellers, the more opportunities you have to provide something a customer wants. And, the more opportunities Amazon has to appear in search for these more obscure items. By encouraging third parties to sell and by protecting the buyer’s retail experience Amazon has created a retail network that is larger and more vibrant than Amazon would be on its own. Third party sellers allow online retailers to sell literally anything that can be sold.

Third party sales provide valuable data

If you’re an online retailer, you want to capture any online transaction you can. Since third party sellers allow you to sell anything, you have no reason not to try to sell everything since you’re simply using your market power to connect buyers and sellers. One thing most people fail to account for is how much data you can glean from third party sales. For example, let’s say there is a brisk business in third party sales for kitchen utensils. If you were Amazon, you might look at the stats for this product category and decide to start buying more products to build out your kitchen utensil product line so that you could take advantage of the buyer interest in the category. Without the data from these third party sales you might never have gone after this category. So, such data is extremely useful in turning up non-intuitive findings.

The problem with the Sears’ and Walmarts of the online world is that no one wants to shop at Sears or Walmart. They do so with reluctance, either because they feel don’t have the financial means or because they have no other choices. With Walmart positioning itself as the world’s low cost purveyor of low quality products and nauseating retail experiences and Sears edging toward oblivion, Amazon is in perfect shape for growth with an impeccable reputation and a powerful brand that they protect at all costs. Amazon understands what Walmart and Sears have forgotten: people want value and value doesn’t just mean having the lowest price. It means making people feel like they got their money’s worth.

Just because we humans can’t hear them doesn’t mean plants don’t howl. Some of the compounds that plants generate in response to insect mastication — their feedback, you might say — are volatile chemicals that serve as cries for help. Such airborne alarm calls have been shown to attract both large predatory insects like dragon flies, which delight in caterpillar meat, and tiny parasitic insects, which can infect a caterpillar and destroy it from within.

The idea that plants possess a certain awareness or at least a tactile sense perception is rather startling. Imagine walking through the woods among the trees who are dimly aware of you. We are used to thinking of trees as almost inanimate objects, pushing forth from the dirt in a blind process of life. But, if they can respond to attack and can signal one another then it brings them closer to possessing a certain being.